


Blessing of Apollo

by SpraceJunkie



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Cyclops - Freeform, M/M, PJO AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 07:19:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14373717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpraceJunkie/pseuds/SpraceJunkie
Summary: Jack Kelly, son of Apollo, stronger than most might think.Crutchie Morris, son of Hephaestus, equally strong.Sort of an offshoot/scene from the PJO au I started a while ago, Fire and Light, but it doesn't fit anywhere, at least not yet.





	Blessing of Apollo

Jack wasn’t easy to get angry. 

He didn’t like being angry.

He liked being relaxed, letting people think he didn’t care much about anything. He was a son of Apollo, he was smiley and goofy and sure, maybe he was good at fighting, but he really never did. That was how people saw him, and that’s how he wanted them to. 

If they saw him as harmless, he was safer. They’d leave him alone, they’d let him practice his archery or sword fighting in peace.

So he wasn’t easy to make angry. He was good at keeping his head, even in a fight. He was good at being the person who was good, but not too good, motivated, but not too motivated, dangerous, but not too dangerous. Middle of the pack, especially for demigods, and especially on quests.

On quests, it was too dangerous to get angry. It was too dangerous to risk not thinking straight, especially in a fight when he could put somebody else at risk.

Crutchie knew this better than anyone. He knew _Jack_ better than anyone. He knew that Jack put out his personality of being a relaxed guy, somebody who didn’t know much other than he needed to and wasn’t a scary person. He laughed and shrugged things off.

He also knew that Jack had dealt with more in his lifetime than was normal, even for demigods. That’s he survived being a young runaway, that he had panic attacks over things that wouldn’t make sense to most people, that he loved to escape to the strawberry fields and paint for hours, that he practice his fighting more than anyone just so he could feel in control of something.

Crutchie knew that Jack was an exceptionally dangerous demigod, one more powerful than most children of Apollo, who knew and preferred not to use it. He had seen the way Jack could fight when they were cornered, but even so, he’d never seen anything like this.

It should have been an easy fight. Two cyclopes, neither of them huge. Two demigods, experienced fighters.

And yet, somehow Crutchie was on the ground, one cyclops turned to dust, but the other hovering over him, about to kill him.

And then something had stopped him, and when Crutchie opened his eyes, he saw why.

He _felt_ why.

There was heat coming from where Jack had been knocked away, and light. Crutchie couldn’t see his boyfriend, just some kind of aura shining around the cyclops where he was blocking Crutchie’s view.

“You will not.” Jack’s voice was unmistakable, but different. Even in a fight, Jack normally had a tone that told people he wasn’t overly concerned. Not having fun, but not scared.

Now his voice was controlled, angry, hard, completely unlike anything Crutchie had ever heard.

“You will not touch him. You will not hurt him.” There was the swish and thump of an arrow hitting the cyclops, not killing it, but angering it enough to step away from Crutchie, growling.

Jack was standing at the edge of the clearing where he’d fallen, standing, his bow dropped next to him, his quiver empty and abandoned behind him.

He was glowing, but as he stared, Crutchie realized it wasn’t exactly light.

It was flames, the sort of flames that surrounded the sun during an eclipse, flickering across his skin and clothes, filtering through the rips in his jeans and tshirt, dancing through his hair. The red of the flames around him contrasted with the green above his head from the trees, and when Crutchie dropped his eyes to the grass around his feet, normal flames were burning in a neat circle around him, apparently not hurting him or burning through his worn sneakers.

His eyes were flickering with orange-red flames, like the eyes of Ares, only when Crutchie looked into them, he didn’t feel angry and fearful, he felt the kind of righteous anger that filled people fighting for a good cause, and the sort of feeling that was almost indescribable, in the pit of his stomach, like hope for springtime after a long, hard winter.

“Step away from him.” Jack looked towards Crutchie, who was reaching to reclaim his sword before the cyclops turned his attention back to him. Jack’s hand flicked something by his side, and Crutchie looked down.

“Close your eyes. Stay down. Close your eyes. Stay down. Close your eyes. Stay down.” He was signing, the same letters, over and over again.

Jack wouldn’t tell him to do something that wasn't necessary, and Crutchie trusted him. After countless missions together, countless fights, he had to.

He screwed his eyes shut and ducked his head into his arms, keeping his grip on his sword but not looking up.

There was light, bright enough that Crutchie could see it with his eyes closed and head down, and he felt hot air rushing over him, like fire was shooting over him. The cyclops screamed, a sound completely unlike anything Crutchie had ever heard any monster make, and it sounded like it had fallen to the ground, at least to its knees. 

The light faded, and the wind disappeared, and within thirty seconds Crutchie heard and felt the dust storm of a monster dissipating.

“Are you okay?” Crutchie looked up and took the hand Jack was offering him, standing up, pulling the hilt of his sword to get it back to his crutch.

“I’m fine. It didn’t touch me.” The fire was almost gone, just left dancing in a halo through Jack’s hair. “What was that.” Jack shrugged, back to his normal self.

“I got mad. Then Dad gave me a blessing.”

“What did you do?”

“I’m not sure. What I was supposed to. I understood it right away. It was like I was the moon in an eclipse. I made the cyclops look into the sun, pretty much, blinded it. Then I killed him.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have to think.” Crutchie laughed shakily, his heart still beating faster than normal from almost dying. He leant into Jack, letting Jack support him for a minute.

“Oscar and Morris should be much more scared of you than they are.”

“I guess everyone should be.” Jack looked up to the sky, and Crutchie knew he was praying to his dad, thanking Apollo for the help. “C’mon. We’re only a day from camp. We should get home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I guess my though process here was if Aphrodite has a blessing, and Ares has a blessing, the other gods probably do, too. And Apollo might seem like a goofy, ridiculous guy, but he's the god of archery, the plague, light, knowledge, and medicine, not just music and poetry and oracles, and he's the ideal athletic man, so he's pretty kickass.
> 
> I made up the blessing, but I just had this picture of Jack wreathed in flames and this scene that I wanted to get out.
> 
> Anyway, as always, I'm Asper, I'm @enby-crutchie on tumblr, and I really appreciate comments and kudos!
> 
> Thanks!


End file.
